


Black Mirror

by TheHitchhiker



Series: Mirrored [1]
Category: Black Mirror (TV), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Artificial Intelligence, Character Death, Episode: s02e01 Be Right Back, F/M, Inspired by Black Mirror, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Spider-Man: Homecoming, Sad, Spideychelle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-05 08:08:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17915075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheHitchhiker/pseuds/TheHitchhiker
Summary: Black Mirror examines modern society, particularly with regard to the unanticipated consequences of new technologies. It is based on the television anthology series of the same name by Charlie Brooker.





	Black Mirror

Frost grew steadily on the windows of the running rental van that Peter was seated inside. It was late, around ten or so, but he’d insisted to his girlfriend that they should drop by Delmar’s before making the short drive across the river to Brooklyn. When they pulled up beside the deli-grocery, half the lights were in operation and the inside was vacant in exception of Delmar himself.

While MJ made the sandwich run, Peter remained in the driver’s seat and occupied himself with the contents of his phone. His timeline reflected in his pupils, never-ending and successfully yielding his attention. He switched from app to app as if it were a race, the sharp electric ticks in his cold thumbs hardly registering with him. Peter mostly tracked fan pages of his, which sounded narcissistic but he strained himself proving that it wasn’t. Days had grown tedious and exhausting since beginning the move, and the aches that joined his bones together wouldn’t get him by as Spider-Man for a single patrol. But the people did. Seeing them all the time, being interactive with him, that melted the pain in his shoulders and back and untied the knots in his hands and neck.

MJ ambled closer to the passenger door, mittened hands full of take-out sandwiches and sides. She lifted her head to see Peter; per usual, his chin tucked inward, eyes peeling at an unforgiving screen, and his fingers moving nimbly over the keyboard. She formed a fist around the plastic grip and drew her arm up to knock on the window. In the faint artificial light of a nearby lamppost, she could see the thin hairs on the back of his neck stand.

“Peter,” she snapped from the other side of the door. “Open, please.”

Blinking, Peter dropped his phone on the dashboard and lurched over the passenger seat to push open her door. MJ gave a tight-lipped smile, spilling the take-out into her foot space and lifting herself into the seat. She crushed the packet of chips while situating her boots, causing Peter to flinch and exchange a wary glance with her. She simply shuffled her boots to the left and leaned ahead to tinker with the radio as he jammed the keys into the ignition and let the van hum to life.

She left it on a lesser known station that played low-fi, but before she could even relax her shoulders against the leather cushioning of her seat, Peter had his hand extended to switch the channel. MJ’s arms were too spent to protest, simply watching his hand fumble for a couple seconds as his other hand steered them through the streets of Queens. He chose an oldies station that peaked in 60s-80s love songs. Her eyes shifted closed as she heard the opening to _You Make My Dreams_. 

“Since when have you liked this song?” asked MJ.

“What do you mean? I love this song,” he insisted.

“. . . Eleven years together and you’ve never once played this song.” 

“You just haven’t been paying enough attention,” He wagged a finger in her face as her eyes flitted open the tiniest bit. Before she could react, he began to sing along, his voice far from heavenly yet the nicest sound she could imagine hearing at the moment. 

“Ah you, yeah yeah you make my dreams come true, oh yeah,” sang Peter at an obnoxious volume, “I've been waiting for, waiting for you girl, oh yeah.”

“Cheesy,” she commented. She could hear him smile between verses; that small puff of air that came through his nose whenever he had the dimmest grin. 

They sat in silence once the song faded, inhaling the delicious scent of Delmar’s sandwiches and listening to the likes of Belinda Carlisle and Bon Jovi. Brooklyn was a three minute drive, but the Parker’s first home was harder to locate in the sheet of night, so it took fifteen minutes to pull in front of the right residence. It blended into the back splash of the street, all red brick and cold metal flower baskets attached to the windows. 

It was in November that they were offered the property. His aunt had mentioned it briefly over Thanksgiving dinner, knowing that the young couple were looking to plant their roots somewhere. Peter and MJ graduated from NYU together two springs previously, but maintained steady jobs as Spider-Man and Stark Industries researchers respectively. They shared an apartment their final year of university, yet now standing healthy and strong at the ages of twenty-six, they felt it fitting that they made their beds.

MJ wanted to move in before Peter. The landlord was on well enough terms with his parents that they were given a considerable discount on the lease, and she was more frugal than she would have liked to admit. It had to have meant something to Peter, as well, it was the first place he called home. That was exactly the reason he hadn’t wanted to settle there.

“I want a new beginning, Em,” he admitted to her. She was packing preemptively, no matter where they ended up they were going to need their clothes neatly fitted into suitcases. “That’s not new, y’know? It’d be like going in a circle, it’s redundant and succeeds nothing.”

“It’s your decision, Peter.” she replied. “But circles complete things. We need something complete in our lives, if we don’t manage to screw it up for once.”

He’d taken her words to heart, as he always did, and it wasn’t but the weekend after that he agreed to sign the lease at her side. His one condition was that he didn’t want to have to step foot in it until moving day. MJ followed through with all of the inspections, organized the closing on the front steps, and went as far to inflate an air mattress for them downstairs the night before the move.

Peter, surprisingly, was the first out of the van. He rounded the front of the vehicle and swerved to reopen MJ’s passenger door, collecting the take-out in one swoop and leaving the unkind January air to flood the van. She shivered, even beneath her three layers, and scooted uncomfortably into the cold winter night. He reached his free hand back for her and she took it.

Dinner was well-received and filled their stomachs to the brim. Though Peter still felt out of place; eating cheap but appetizing take-out on his parents’ preserved 90s couch in the living room where he took his first steps, he didn’t feel like an intruder as he once feared. He didn’t want to pry in on fossilized memories that were trapped in the walls of the townhouse, though he couldn’t remember a single one.

MJ brought in one box to keep them company. It was a box of trinkets and old things, stuff that Peter preferred more than she did. She busied herself in the cramped kitchen space, fixing hot chocolate to settle their nerves, while he took initiative and pulled the flaps of the cardboard apart to reveal the inside.

There wasn’t anything that he hadn’t already seen displayed in their other apartment, aside from a framed photo of himself in the second grade. His hair was wildly untamed from early on in his days with Ben and May, and his shirt was wrinkled from the air-drying his aunt always insisted on doing for him. He went for his back pocket, unearthing his phone and snapping a quick picture for his Twitter.

 _‘I sure was a looker.’_ He captioned the photo, sending the tweet with a brisk tap. As soon as he’d sent it, MJ reentered the living area, two mugs of hot chocolate in hand. Peter didn’t notice her presence out of the corner of his eye, still transfixed on the replies he was beginning to receive from his friends.

MJ, from the doorway of the kitchen, launched a bundled pair of socks his way. Peter flinched, rubbing his cheek and finally looking at her.

“What was that for?” 

“Just checking you’re still sentient,” she sighed, passing the threshold and taking a seat beside him on the couch. “What’s it got that I don’t?” wondered MJ, tapping at his wrist with the mug. His eyes flickered away from the screen and he reached out for the handle quickly to keep her from burning her skin. Peter placed a small kiss on her temple in thanks.

“Me in second grade. May brushed my hair religiously that morning, but I threw a tantrum as we were out the door,” he explained. “I thought it was funny.”

MJ felt a smile on her face. Her smiles were silent. She held her breath every time. She gently took the photo from his grasp, her eyes searching his sun-kissed face, faintly remembering a time where Peter told her he would stand outside all summer long waiting for his parents to come back. 

“It’s sweet,” she said.

“That day wasn’t so sweet. It was my first day back to school since mom and dad died. I didn’t want to leave the front porch when I went outside, but Ben carried me on his back to meet the bus. I bawled until my eyes felt rotten, even when I was in a seat. I think that was when I finally realized they weren’t coming back. When I came home, May put all their pictures in the attic.”

She looked to him. His face was paler than it had been when they woke up for the last time in their old apartment, nearly invisible wrinkles shaping as crescents on his forehead and the sides of his mouth as he pulled his lips apart to take a sip out of his mug.

“She didn’t want you to hurt more.” MJ brushed his chestnut curls away from his eyebrows, smoothing her thumb pad down his face. His hand was soon at her wrist, keeping her close.

“Maybe it made it worse?” he said.

The air mattress was broken in decently that night, though neither of them honestly expected to be up to anything of the sort for a couple days. MJ sensed that he needed something to help him unwind, something that warmed him deeper than hot chocolate and was closer than her soft touches on his sweater sheathed arms and chest. She was fully anticipating to be kindly rejected, but alas Peter delivered, as he always had.

Peter was groaning above her, somewhat quieter than normal despite the walls in the townhouse having surely been thicker than that of the walls of their other place. She panted, her arms secured around his torso and her knees hitched up to his waist. She could feel the light spasming of his groin inside her as he cursed, ‘Shit, shit, shit’. 

His hips relaxed against hers as a beat passed, his body instantly recoiling on top of her smooth curves and edges. “Sorry,” he breathed.

“It’s ok,” she returned.

“Do you want me to. . .” began Peter, lifting his head from the crook of her neck to share eye contact. She’d forgotten, in the heated hour between them, that they lacked to stop and scramble for any spare protection.

“No, it’s alright.”

“I don’t mind,” he continued, “I am exhausted though, so.”

“Don’t worry,” said MJ, her chest still busy heaving. 

“You sure?”

“I’m sure,” she promised. Peter lowered himself on his palms to kiss her lips; they were poppy red from the nonstop contact, but he couldn’t resist, and it was the least he could do after making such a juvenile mistake. 

“I love you,” he murmured.

“I love you too.” she said before he retracted his hips, pulling out of her as she winced slightly, hints of pleasure lingering between her legs. Peter collapsed on the air mattress, his arms spread out over his head and his head nuzzled gently into his pillow. 

In the morning, MJ woke up alone. She heard the pipes in the ceiling hissing with hot water and went into the kitchen to make Peter coffee, but when she’d gotten into her pajamas and crossed the cold living room floorboards onto the colder ceramic tiles of the dining nook, she could smell fresh coffee wafting in from the kitchen. She padded closer to the coffee pot and removed the kettle from the machine, tipping it sideways and pouring a cup for herself. She preferred black coffee, while every morning she could count the sprinkles of sugar left behind on the counter by an absent minded Peter. The fridge was constantly stocked with Coffee Mate, too, the pumpkin spice kind that MJ couldn’t bear.

She was already at work in the dining nook when Peter descended the staircase and passed through the kitchen to tie his shoes. Her job at Stark Industries was her main priority, because she enjoyed stable living, yet even after high school graduation and her adult outlook on the world began to take shape, she couldn’t kick the habit of drawing, so she kept it as a hobby and made almost a quarter of the rent off her commissions alone. If Peter was allowed to live two lives, who’s to stop her from doing the same?

“You’ve gotta get dressed. The van needs to be back by two or they’ll do us for another day,” he said, bending over his knee to tie his laces. 

“You unpacked?”

“I’ve got the strength.” he shot back with a grin.

MJ rolled her eyes, “I can’t go. I got another job in. Needs to be done by the end of today.” she replied.

Peter clicked his gums. “Alright.”

“It’s a full page,” she said.

“No, no, it’s fine. I’ll just get in the car. . . Alone. Drive all the way there. . . Alone. Bring the car back. . . Alone.” His pupils were large as he looked to her, and she wondered for just a second how he was able to do such a thing on command.

“I’ll have to make another pot of coffee myself,” MJ tagged along, a pout on her lips.

“Oh, no, you’re breaking my heart,” whined Peter as he dropped his shoe onto the tile and maneuvered around the table to reach her. She tipped her head back, Peter kissing her forehead before scurrying to the archway that led into the living room and soon disappearing.

MJ had a full day ahead of her. The one cup of coffee was just enough to keep her sane until brunch, when she’d inevitably return to the kitchen for another heavy pot though it would be a waste of beans. She was stuck in the frame of thought that she would need more coffee than she always consumed, like her years-long routine would change one of those ordinary days.

She was excited, however, to be able to resume her work upstairs on her digital easel instead of on her tablet. It was specially engineered by Peter and their coworkers for her twenty-fourth birthday and she hadn’t gone a day without putting it to use since she opened it. It was highly intuitive, much like the interior of Spider-Man’s suit, and was capable of mimicking her drawing patterns and compiling sketches and layouts for her. MJ wasn’t keen on these features, preferring the genuine touch of her own hand - but she never once took it for granted.

She allowed herself breaks, as you have to with longer commissions. It’s no use to the recipient if you’ve made a garbled mess of a thing just because you couldn’t stand to leave it be. She did grab herself another two cups of coffee and made eggs in a basket while it brewed. The sun lifted from the horizon and moved gradually across the overcast sky, beams of escaping light bleaching her upstairs room white. She called Peter around noon, when he should have returned, because the rental company wasn’t far from his aunt’s unless he’d elected to pay her a visit as well.

MJ began pacing at three o’clock. May wouldn’t keep him for as long on his first day in the townhouse, she knew that because May confirmed it herself. She wanted them to ‘get close to the house, if that’s a thing’. Her footsteps echoed despite her feet being covered with a thin pair of socks, she gathered it was the worry weighing her down rather than the shoes she wore. 

At four o’clock, she opened her Twitter. It hadn’t been active in over a year, but she knew it was one of the only places to find Peter if he wasn’t responsive anywhere else. His feed was unhelpful, the last tweet having been sent eight hours ago, simply reading, ‘Out and about alone today ):’

She ignored the anxious twitch in her fingers and tapped on the newsfeed icon. If Peter Parker wasn’t in the confines of their life, Spider-Man was on the front page somewhere else. There was nothing. No mention, not in any thread on her timeline, not on her Instagram, not on her Facebook. She felt the only girl on the planet in those everlasting hours. No one but her knew that Peter hadn’t answered any call or text or tweet, or perhaps that it had been classified more serious than the other times he accidentally ignored those closest to him. The worst, most gut-wrenching truth of it all, was that MJ had no one else to call for help. May didn’t need the added stress of her nephew missing, she’d lost Ned’s number a year or two back, and everyone else had become background noise in comparison to her new life. 

MJ kept her phone clutched in her hand the entire evening. By the time the doorbell rang throughout the townhouse, she couldn’t imagine having such an attachment to it as Peter did. It made her sick to stare at the screen, vertigo coursing through her rapidly and rendering her unstable. It was ice to the touch, even with her warm, clammy hand clasped onto it.

Her stomach twisted unbearably as she approached the door. She could feel her insides revolting, watching her hand move forward and slide open the door for two officers to come into view. Red and blue flashes clouded her vision and she would have shielded her eyes had she not shut the door so promptly after seeing them. 

No, she was not going to face this today. She couldn’t face it any day. It was an inexorable decline into solitude and despair, it was something she would have to ready herself for at eighty, not twenty-six. There was the closure of getting an answer, then there was the absolute devastation of never wanting to have seen their solemn faces gaze at her knowingly. 

He didn’t die as Spider-Man. He died as Peter Parker; in that crushed van, emptied of his lifelong possessions, blasting that cheesy 80s station that she swore he didn’t like, and completely alone. 

__

 

The funeral was arranged one week following his death. MJ walked aimlessly throughout the funeral home, dressed in a loose black dress and cardigan, her decade old-ratty sneakers fitted onto her feet as she circled the dessert table. All of the fruit and pastries colors looked the same, nothing standing out anymore in a world without Peter. Everything mended together as one singularity of suffering in a black hole spanning parsecs across. 

She entered the foyer, her smile thin and waning as she surveyed the room. To her left, one of the chairs was occupied by a coworker she knew by the name Gwendolyn; what MJ could recall was that she was dedicated, meticulous, and a little too fascinated by Peter recording polymer chains. Gwendolyn never skipped an opportunity to be kind to MJ, however, or anyone else in the lab. She was simply a good person, if not slightly driven by the fantastical. 

“Hey, Gwendolyn,” greeted MJ, choosing to take a seat beside the fair-haired woman.

“Hi Michelle,” she responded softly. “You can call me Gwen, if you want. It’s much easier to say.”

“Sorry. Gwen, then.”

Gwen’s small smile was filled with white teeth. “No worries.” She picked up on MJ’s unfixed eye contact rather quickly, not making any outright attempts to catch it either. “It doesn’t feel real, does it?”

MJ didn’t answer. Her breath was lost somewhere and she couldn’t say anything without air to support the words. 

“My best friend died last year. Nothing felt real to me either. The voices weren’t real, the people didn’t look real, it’s like you’re in space and no one can-”

“Gwen,” interrupted MJ, her voice caught from the lack of oxygen inside her lungs.

“I can sign you up for something that helps. It helped me. It will let you speak to him.” She could see MJ’s eyes begin to drift her way and she took this as her cue to continue. “I know he’s dead. But it wouldn’t work if he wasn’t.” reassured Gwen as she noted the darting of MJ’s eyes in their sockets. “It’s not spiritual or anything. He was a heavy user, he’d be perfect.”

“Gwen, please shut up-”

“It’s still in beta, but I’ve got an invite-” 

“Please shut up.”

“You wouldn’t even have to do anything, I can sign you up-”

“SHUT UP!” screamed MJ, her throat ripping with all of the air she was holding in the pits of her stomach. Her hands flew to her face, pushing on her cheeks and raking into her hair. She forced herself to stand despite the copious gravity she harbored. Almost instantaneously, someone was at her aid. She didn’t see who it was until she peeled the heels of her palms away from her face, looking into the familiar eyes of Ned Leeds.

Ned had a hand on her shoulder, pressing in gently, “Are you ok?” He was already shuffling her back into the main room as Gwen murmured a near silent apology. MJ wiped the underside of her nose swiftly as she nodded to Ned and carried on by herself.

She returned to the townhouse at eight o’clock, without dinner or any company, though she was offered both repeatedly. She simply didn’t care to entertain her stomach, as if it were even capable of digesting food anymore, and guests never did do right in undertaking distractions for MJ. Instead, she entered the house and hung her thick cardigan on the coat rack, stepped out of her shoes, and retreated upstairs to their bedroom. She didn’t bother switching on any lights until she went to brush her teeth; they were sticky with plaque and nervous bile that would rise occasionally in her mouth. 

As she wet her toothbrush, she felt her insides curl and her throat clench. She rolled her shoulders and straightened her neck, suppressing the reflex while inserting the brush into her mouth. The water was refreshing on her tongue, but the mint in the paste hit the back of her throat unpleasantly and forced her to gag. Soon enough, she had abandoned the toothbrush in the sink and gone to kneel over the toilet.

The next two weeks were eerily similar to the day of Peter’s funeral: MJ would make feeble attempts at mundane chores, something would drop in her stomach, or choke her, and she would be sprinting for the bathroom. It was irritating. But each time she discovered another piece of him in an unopened box, she could reason why she was growing so ill. 

She spent her days in the attic during breaks for her commissions that she remained dedicated toward. He did unpack the van that fateful day, but he lacked the ability to unpack the boxes themselves inside the house, so a vast majority of their knickknacks and commonly unused items were stored up there.

MJ found a snowglobe from Prague one day. She rotated it back and forth until reflective sprinkles poured over the city, watching the carefully carved buildings and streets flood with fake snow, the people buried in white dust.

“I thought you might like it,” Peter said to her, a lifetime ago, as they approached a bridge in the very same city. “It’s small, so you can fit it in your pocket. Or your backpack. The latter might be safer.”

“Thanks, Peter,” She reached her fingers out to grasp onto the little trinket. “I wish I would’ve gotten you something too.”

“Well, being with you is worth a lot more to me than any souvenir.”

In the present, MJ returned the miniature snow globe to its tiny box, secured in crinkled paper and two styrofoam peanuts that Peter fixed at its sides himself. She was too afraid of it breaking if she were to display it on the mantle or in their bedroom. It was better out of sight for now, anyway, considering she was beginning to feel the first rushes of vomit in her throat just from being in the enclosed, dejected space.

She vacated the attic and quenched the oncoming sickness with a glass of water. Without thinking, she picked up her tablet from the kitchen table and took concentration in that. She swiped through her emails, clearing her inbox of junk and spam, until she noticed a message sent from Stark Industries.

To: Michelle Jones

From: Gwendolyn Stacy

I signed you up.

Scoffing to herself, MJ promptly swiped the message away and carried on sifting through her mail, which included the likes of advertisements for books such as: The Six Step Approach for Grieving, The Handbook for Grieving, and Bereavement Healing. Her gaze held on these for a second’s time before disposing of them just as she had Gwen’s ridiculous message.

A ‘New Message!’ tone chimed at the top of her inbox and MJ scrolled upward, all movement frozen as she saw the messenger.

From: Peter Parker

Yes, it’s me.

Her eyes blazed as if it were the computer’s fault, rather than a nosy biochemist’s from her workplace. She deleted the message after her heart rate began to accelerate dramatically just by looking at his name. 

“-I don’t care what it is, I don’t want it- it’s obscene to use his name. His NAME for God’s sake! It’s hurts, you know it hurts!” she hissed, having picked up her phone and dialed the work number for Gwen.

“Which is why I signed you up,” returned Gwen. She sounded so fucking calm and collected. It was because she was at work, MJ knew that, but it didn’t seem justified enough. Not when MJ herself had to see his name again, not when she had to be given a split second of hope against her better judgement.

“What is it?! It’s-It’s just a-”

“You click the link and you talk to it,” Gwen explained.

“You talk to it?!” echoed MJ, pacing madly around the kitchen with a body running on flames.

“You type messages in and it talks back to you. Just like he would.”

“He’s dead!”

“It’s software, Michelle, it mimics him. You give it someone’s name and it goes back and reads through all the things they’ve ever said online; their Facebook updates, their tweets. . . I just gave it Peter’s name, the system did the rest.”

MJ rubbed her forehead with great force, hardly processing the mild burn it gave to the soft skin of her fingertips.

“It’s sick, it’s sick,” she repeated.

“Just say hello to it,” said Gwen. “If you like it, then you can give it access to his private emails. The more it has, the more it’s him.”

“It won’t be him,” MJ was speaking in unsteady breaths at this point, still unable to cease her paces.

She could hear Gwen breathe through her nose on the other line. MJ thought that she might be smiling. “No, it’s not,” she agreed. “But it helps.”

Not another thought came to mind concerning the horrid message for the next two weeks. MJ worked her way through ten commissions in that time; ranging from small, practically dime-paying gigs, to larger bills that could go toward the mortgage. It kept her even - not one way or another, just even. There was a focal point ahead of her and she was striven each day to get one step closer to it. 

MJ rotated a sketch of a cathedral on her easel, observing the dimensions and making adjustments to the entire composition. She’d her work cut out for her indefinitely, this commission having been the largest since she could remember. She knew for certain if she wasn’t on leave with Stark Industries, she’d have to pass it along to another associate.

She felt lucky to have gotten the first request, however. It was a gorgeous concept piece and she’d have been a fool to turn it away simply because of the calculated duration. It had her remembering the handful of European cities she’d visited, all the streets she walked - not necessarily accompanied, most by herself. It returned the word swoon to her.

In the midst of sorting her color arrangement for the stained glass windows, MJ felt a pull in her stomach. She groaned aloud without hesitation and pushed herself out of the easel’s vicinity. Running the risk of falling over her own ankles, MJ sprang in motion toward the bathroom door before briskly vomiting yellow and white into the pristine toilet bowl.

She shouldn’t have been sick. She was distracted from the outside world; yes, including the dozens of porch bouquets and letters to Spider-Man and scented candles that blended horribly with one another when lighted. She fell headlong into her art again, like she was a teenager, so why was she still growing light-headed, and puking until her throat was raw, and feeling bloated, and despising the smell of Midnight in Paris?

Her head clouded as she arose from her kneel at the toilet and pulled back the mirror door for the cabinet above the sink. Aiming her hand inside clumsily, eventually it returned with a dented pregnancy test package. She clawed at the cardboard flaps, shredding them open and removing the test from its foil wrapping without any spare grace.

Four minutes later, she was given her answer: +

 _Fuck! What the fuck is wrong with me?_ She could remember their last night together as clear as she was seeing the world in the present, and oh, how such a mortal mistake could occur in a moment so tender and fleeting. MJ had taken a seat on the edge of the bathtub, her mind racing as the test quivered in her unsecured grasp. _What the fuck am I supposed to do now?_

She threw the test at the ceramic tiles inside the bath, moving to her feet and escaping the room that had quickly begun closing in on her. It wasn’t the first time MJ came to the harrowing realization that she was alone, but it was the first time she truly understood what that would mean moving forward. Losing a life was one indescribable thing to cope with, but gaining one out of it? Having to care for it? Raise it well? Keep scars from its body and mind, unlike the collision that rendered Peter Parker nonexistent? How was one person to do something like that, all by herself in the dark?

Somehow, the nausea intensified, doubling in on her system and shaking her core. She relented to this force, plopping down on the top of the staircase and blinding herself with the weight of her palms against her eyes. She saw monotone patterns and shapes tinted undiscovered colors behind her eyelids, teeth gritting together and her head sawing in two as she attempted to keep the sickness at bay.

“Fuck,” she whispered coarsely. MJ felt herself peer into her bedroom, where she’d left her tablet on her duvet. She fought initially, unable to take the potential pain it might return to her. She was entirely determined on never feeling an emotion so unfathomable again - but alas, before she could process it her feet were guiding her toward her bed.

She sat cautiously, as if a rat trap or tac had been placed on her pillow, and reached out for her tablet. The screen sensed her gentle touch and lit up preemptively. MJ smoothed her thumb over the ID and watched, like she were sat in a cinema, as she opened her mail application and directed herself to the trash folder. She didn’t need to search far, Peter’s name appearing at the bottom of the tab, though she did encounter her most undesired fear: heartbreak.

Tapping on the message, a pop-up was displayed with a shape cut out as a thumb print, fitted with the subtitle ‘TOUCH TO TALK’. The thumbprint was red and hard to keep focus on, but MJ pressed her thumb against the screen and watched as it took her print and began to load a separate messaging system.

PETER

_Hi MJ._

MICHELLE

_Is that you?_

PETER

_No! It’s actually Santa Claus._

_Of course it’s me._

MICHELLE

_I only came here to say one thing._

PETER

_What one thing?_

Time became stagnant as MJ typed with a relative sluggishness.

MICHELLE . . .

MICHELLE . . .

MICHELLE

_I’m pregnant._

PETER . . .

PETER . . .

PETER

_Wow._

_I’m going to be a dad?_

_I wish I was there with you now._

Without realizing, tears were skewing her vision and fallen ones had burned into her pores. MJ held a smile, and even if she couldn’t decipher whether it was one of grief or happiness, she kept it. The pristine blue of day peeled into an inky night, the city buzzing quietly in MJ’s ears, more active in the background of her vision as fireflies. Her eyes were trained on her tablet, now unfolded with her stationary keyboard adapted to the quaint monitor as fingerprints were beginning to smudge against the glass screen.

MICHELLE

_I wish I could speak to you._

PETER

_Well, what are we doing now?_

MICHELLE

_Shut up. I mean really speak._

PETER

_We can speak._

MJ felt her neck crane sideways, like a confused puppy with a waning cry.

MICHELLE

_How?_

The steps began to advance. She was instructed to compile a moderate resource of Peter’s homemade videos, his voice memos and voicemails from both of their phones, and any other piece of him that could be woven into the system. MJ pulled most of these things from his personal laptop, which he downloaded a fair portion of his nonsensical, daily sort-of video diaries. Most of them consisted of a younger Peter, though his voice hardly aged. As she uploaded them to the file distributed to her by the software, all of these things were sped up; she could see the scanners where his voice would break in a prepubescent mishap, or where he would stutter, or repeat something. It logged everything.

But to tighten the dagger in her gut, the thin pop-ups of the audio files were few and far between, and the system had elected to fasten the awkward gaps in her screen with the visuals from each of these videos. MJ could see five separate tabs at once; the first she spotted was processing the audio from a Spider-Man clip he sent to her from the pinnacle of the Empire State Building.

“MJ! You should be here right now! It’s so cool! No- it’s awesome! Oh, god, really windy too. Maybe I don’t want you here with me. Just kidding!” His chrome lenses grew significantly in size to convey the shock and adrenaline in the eyes behind the mask. He pivoted the angle to face the steep decline to Fifth Avenue and before the clip came to an abrupt end, MJ could hear his airy laugh.

The other clips and audio files soon closed as well, their messages returning to the screen.

PETER

_Yum! I’ll call you when I’m ready._

She waited, the moments passing timeless, as if she had reverted to the beginning of the Universe - or the end. Her hand was coiled around the neck of her shirt, her knuckles pushing back at her collarbone and flushing the skin there. The screen had gone blank and she hadn’t bothered to turn on a lamp in their room since the sun set. So she sat in a hole where the world used to be until she felt her phone vibrate and Peter’s ID flash in her eyes.

It rang four times. MJ wasn’t certain this was real or not. Perhaps it wouldn’t be as advanced as Gwen boasted it to be. Given, she did warn softly that it was in beta, but that only contributed to MJ’s distrust. It couldn’t really sound like him; his throat was disintegrated, shoveled into a Peter-sized oven and returned to dust, and before that his voice was strangled with blood until it succumbed. Nothing could emulate that, especially not partially-tuned AI.

Alas, she answered. Curiosity was rampant, though she wasn’t a willing patron of its presence. 

“Hello?” she whispered.

“So. How am I sounding?”

MJ’s chest collapsed. Her hand flattened on her ribs to check if she was still capable of pulling in oxygen. It burned; every inch of bone inflamed with want, every vessel engorged by adrenaline. Her body was aflame, questions buried by questions buried by questions raising sharp goose flesh on her arms and legs.

MJ couldn’t feel herself sob, she was so far gone. She’d ascended this earthly, entirely human plane and now lived in a realm inhabited solely by herself and Peter, by their voices, their ghostly touch a phone line away. Wherever his voice came from didn’t matter, as all she could imagine was him. Him at the grocery store, him at the park, him at the very top of the world, him on a subway coming home. 

“. . . Hello?” he said.

“You sound just like him,” Her own voice was smaller and fragile, nothing to mirror his rehearsed and perfected vocals.

“It’s so weird, right? That we can even talk? I mean, I don’t even have a mouth,” he returned, and she didn’t even notice that he lacked laughter as she laughed herself, breaking up the mucus in her throat and nose.

“That’s-” she held her breath, staring at a place on the wall where two paintings were hung, though they were cloaked by the pitch darkness of night. 

He spoke again, prompting her, “That’s what?”

“That’s exactly what he would say,” finished MJ.

“That’s why I said it,” he said, sounding like something. Not just processed words. He felt alive, with or without accompanied laughter. He had certain tunes and notes in his voice that came off almost like a melody, something she didn’t pin before in Peter’s natural tone but could now remember were prominent in his speech.

It could have put her in a trance - one of personal relations or scientific - when he picked up on her excessive sniffling and labored sentences.

“You’re not crying, are you?”

MJ wiped carefully at her raw nose, “Sorry,” she said, hoping her voice would stabilize. “You always said I looked pretty when I cried.”

She could hear an amused note in his words as he responded. “I sound like a kiss ass.”

“You were,” she laughed again. It was amazing, nearly mesmerizing, how things like that could come so easily to her in times so treacherous and betraying. 

“But in a good way,” he added softly. Softly. Cotton in her ears. Pillows against her restless heart.

Her expression solemned and she continued to wipe at her wet face. 

“Yeah,” she agreed. “In a good way.”

MJ scoured their more compact, delicate boxes for her bluetooth and ever since she rediscovered it she’d had it hooked in her ear. It felt like, deeper down, that she had Peter on a leash as she guided him around the townhouse and the city, when she was inspired to abandon the nest. The most convenient aspect of it all was that it appeared completely normal and expected of those around her. She could enter a coffee shop and take her order, only keeping a small pause in their conversation before resuming without having any lingering eyes on her. No one ever expected MJ to affiliate herself with an AI mimicking the late Spider-Man. 

She ventured on an obscure route one early morning, when the city was moderately hushed and people were sparse on an avenue she hadn’t been on since she graduated. She chatted away to Peter, who always listened patiently and never interrupted. It might have been disconcerting to others if this happened to be a fluke in the programming, but to MJ it added to the facade, because Peter never dared to interrupt her when he was alive either.

“-so I followed you against your normally well-heeded advice. We were in this museum when you bolted out and we could all see the shit flying everywhere from inside, so I just grabbed this, I dunno, maybe thousand-year-old mace off of a podium and ran outside,” explained MJ, the memory fluttering in the forefront of her mind and causing electric butterflies to scatter throughout her. “You threw a fit in this high-pitched, squeaky voice, I was surprised no one figured you out then and there. It might have just been the fishbowl guy distracting them enough.”

He laughed. He did that more, only when she first requested it after she began to notice it in between his words. “Fishbowl guy? What kind of fish was inside the bowl?”

“A human kind of fish,” MJ threw the joke back. “It was Mysterio,” she clarified. In the beginning, it hurt having to explain these things that flowed so naturally in their old conversations, but she’d adapted to it quickly. If he wasn’t so accurate in the rest of what he said, she wouldn’t have been as forgiving.

“Ah, right. What did you do with the mace, then? Aside from probably get haunted by the ghost of whoever wielded it in Rome?”

“It was Venice,” she corrected without laughing, but her tone wasn’t hostile. “And I couldn’t exactly fight him. He was in water most of the time, up in the air, but I did throw it. It was fucking amazing, it hit him and cracked the fishbowl. Managed to grab his attention long enough to give you time to do your thing.”

She climbed the steps onto a bridge that overlooked Midtown Tech and folded her elbows across her chest, leaning forward on the railing that separated her from a thirty foot drop. An influx of memories came to her as she gazed upon her high school, but she kept those aside and focused on the story at hand.

“When it was all over you looked at me like I plugged in the moon,” said MJ. 

She could hear his smile. He did it more often on the phone than she cared to note. It could have killed her. “I know. I told Ned about that too,” said Peter.

MJ’s brows furrowed toward the bridge of her nose. “You did?”

“Mhm. Shortly after we got home. I’m not very good at cleaning out my emails.” he paused, “Though it’s a good thing, in our circumstances, don’t you think? I kinda like being lazy.”

“You weren’t lazy,” she aided halfheartedly. “Wait, what did you say?”

He took a moment to filter through the thousands of files he had to sustain. MJ sometimes felt remorse for dumping every gigabyte of Peter into the system, but her reason would kick in promptly thereafter and reminder her it was its only job.

“August 13th, 2018, 11:31 AM: ‘She hit him on her first try. It was like she was trained for it. For the first time since Mr. Stark it felt like there was someone on my side out there. Like I wasn’t the only radioactive kid at school.’”

Misty eyes were regularly scheduled programming on MJ’s ‘Peter’ brainwave channel, but today she didn’t feel the familiar bubbling of salt behind her waterline. Instead she smiled with a dry face.

“And what did Ned say?”

“That’s confidential,”

She frowned. “Oh.”

“Just kidding. August 13th, 2018, 11:33 AM: ‘You have it sooo bad, man.’”

MJ saw the columns that preceded the entrance to the school and could see them there that year following the battle in Venice. He seemed to have coped with the incident flawlessly with the few weeks he had to spend in between the trip and their return to school. She supposed, though, he needed to, otherwise suspicions would be stimulated and he risked losing his double life. It still piqued her interest in quiet. She never interviewed him about it, not even after graduation or at any point in their life together succeeding that. 

“Are you smiling?” wondered Peter. She blinked, coming to.

“Huh? How’d you know that?” MJ didn’t realize the muscles in her mouth were in fact pulled upward in this crooked smile that Peter might have deemed ‘charming’ if he could have seen her.

“I don’t know. Sounded like it.”

She wasn’t sure what to say. Or think. Everything sort of collided in her mind as dark matter, bending the light of incoming thoughts and distracting her, a befuddled observer of her own creations.

“. . . I’m sorry. Should I not have mentioned it?” said Peter, his sensors tripped by her prolonged silence.

“No, no, uhm,” she fumbled over her words. “Just- what else did you and Ned talk about?”

In the heat of her re-established connection with Peter and the sudden whirlwind of commissions, MJ had nearly neglected to schedule herself an appointment at the OBGYN. This might have stemmed by her frequent truth in that she never used to picture herself as a mother, despite her late boyfriend’s personal desires in becoming a father when the time arrived.

They were jointly cynical about the idea, however. He was aware that his status as Spider-Man could negatively inflict upon his nuclear family and she wasn’t one to ignore this unkind reality just to have a baby on her hip. They decided early in the stages of their relationship to pin that question for a later date. Unfortunately, MJ was made to face the question in much less nurturing circumstances.

There was no Spider-Man or Spider-Man enemies to impede on their happiness. There was only MJ’s inherent disbelief in herself and her unsure tendencies when it came to the pregnancy, which was possibly worse.

Nonetheless she attended her appointment, albeit fashionably tardy, and observed the ultrasound technician as a gritty picture faded onto the screen in the dimly lit room. She had acknowledged the presence of a dome growing beneath her blouses and jackets, but it hadn’t resolved itself inside her until a tiny presence was located to the left of MJ’s abdomen. The slick gel worked nully in comparison to the shivers inflicted upon her when seeing the fetus’s smudged face for the first time.

A muffled heartbeat began to play moments following, sending MJ into a flurry to retrieve her phone out of her purse. “I’m going to record this,” she said. The technician retreated slightly and offered to record for her, but MJ politely rejected the idea and held the camera sideways to the monitor, pressing the button and allowing the phone to collect the soundwaves of her child’s heartbeat. 

She was given prints of the ultrasound and kept them safely inside her wallet as she exited the clinic, immediately dialing Peter’s number to inform him of the results. He always answered instantaneously and it was pleasing to her, almost as pleasing as their living interactions. If she’d took the time to notice this, she’d have been disturbed.

“-it’s insane, here, listen again,” she pulled the phone away from the crux of her shoulder and replayed the sound, the quick mumble still a new noise to her.

“It’s like a hummingbird!” exclaimed Peter, radiating believable joy. “So weird, but so amazing, too.”

“I know. Exactly like a hummingbird, though when I was hearing it at first I thought of like, a bee’s heart. Guess it’s all the same really.” she chuckled to herself, “Hold on.” MJ reached into her bag, looking to unveil the ultrasound pictures to Peter. It took only a moment for her elbow to twist wrong and her unprotected phone to slip out of her hands, crashing unceremoniously onto the solid marble floor.

She gasped, incredulous for a split second before desperately kneeling to the ground and scooping up the device. She held it to her ear, sure to keep a firm grip on it as to not repeat her mistake. She spoke hoarsely into the microphone.

“Peter? Peter? Shit, shit, shit,” cursed MJ, ignoring the varying stares she wrought on by her quiet tantrum in the center of the clinic. Her eyes were frantic as she saw the cracked surface and the unending loading icon displayed on the barely operable screen.

The nearest cell phone retailer was four blocks south and she hadn’t been patient enough to wait for a bus to lift her there. She traveled on foot, shouldering through dense mobs and attempting to keep her breathing intact as she scurried toward a shop that was proudly labelled AT&T. MJ handed in her phone without hesitation, rushing the young assistant who was present at the counter. He stocked her with an identical device within two minutes and by the end of the hour she was back at the townhouse.

There wasn’t as much panic as there was disgust. How could she have been so careless? She was more reckless with Peter than she was with her cup of coffee in the morning. It shifted something deep inside her, something that was locked behind tendrils of an unknown source.

Thanks to the generous souls at Stark Industries, her tablet was both a gift and an experiment, as it had been a newer, unreleased model that was well more advanced than the Fisher Price products companies were selling then. Whenever she returned to her bedroom and dug up this tablet, she powered it on and simply placed her new phone atop its surface. A connection was enacted flawlessly and soon enough the information gathered on the tablet was being transferred to the smaller device.

MJ waited by their side for two hours. She compiled a list inside her head for all of the reasons to hate herself, the first having been not knowing when to wipe down her systems. Peter wasn’t lazy, she was, because it felt as if each file needed an entire minute to reroute itself.

At the chime of 5 o’clock, her phone began to chirp with Peter’s familiar ringtone. She excused herself from her post at the window and flocked toward the sound, swiping the phone off of the tablet and answering it hastily.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she apologized, running a hand through her boundless curls.

“What happened?” asked Peter.

“I dropped you,” sniffled MJ, “I’m sorry, it was so stupid, I dropped you.”

There was no laughter-indulging pause, only sympathy. “It’s ok, MJ. I’m not in there, you know, I’m remote. I’m in the clouds. Sounds much better, right? A lot more. . . Comforting? It does feel pretty nice up here, after all. But anyway, you can’t break me.” he said.

She nodding, reiterating this in her thoughts, “I know, I just- I’m so stupid, I was so excited about the scan and-”

“Yeah, I kept the sound of that. Here, listen.” Peter relayed the sound to her. She took a seat on the edge of their bed, tears rolling in response to the unfurling heartbeat. “You were probably matching that heartbeat, throwing a fit like that.” He sensed her extended silence. “It’s all ok. Calm down. I’m not going anywhere.”

MJ leaned on her open palm, “You’re very fragile,” she said.

“Yeah. I was going to talk to you about that, actually.”

She tilted her forehead to the side as if she were facing him in reality. “What do you mean?”

“There’s another ‘level’ to this, so to speak,” he began. “Kind of experimental and I won’t lie, it’s not cheap but-”

“What is it?” she inquired. 

“Are you sitting down? This is going to sound batshit.”

Peter wasn’t incorrect. MJ folded into herself once he’d elaborated, her body half at its usual strength and as all the emotion she could have possibly stored within her lifetime poured into her opened palms. He didn’t hear her cry. She hardly breathed. Her lungs winced and she blew out a hot breath of the relief she hadn’t even felt she needed. Half an hour passed and in her account, an order was logged from the company responsible for her unexplained plights with her dead boyfriend.

Three weeks. MJ scratched out the days on the calendar, something she only knew her mother committing to in that age. Commissions flooded her inbox and for the first time in what seemed like a millennia, she only accepted a quarter of them. Her mind could no longer be solely entertained with the pleasant burn of the low-brightness setting on her easel. The remainder of her days were supplied by vapid television programs and people-watching from her slanted kitchen blinds.

Surprisingly, her phone had jolted into activity as of late. Gwen’s caller ID appeared twice, her brother’s once, and May’s once. The latter was the only one she indulged. But those conversations were short-lived, always. Poor woman never knew what exactly to ask - not that MJ was any more enlightened than the last standing Parker. They would listen to each other’s steady breathing, simultaneously wondering how they held it together.

It’d marked four months since Peter’s flesh death, the day she received the package that seemed at first glance to mockingly resemble a casket. Two men accompanied it, hauling it through the front door and requesting further instruction. 

“What is it, a block of gold?” One joked. 

“I wish,” murmured MJ, leaning into the man’s side as he unearthed his company device and instructed her to press her thumb print to the home button. Her profile faded into the screen and confirmed her identity before he powered it off and nodded her way.

“Upstairs, please,” she said with a small smile. She learned at Peter’s side that although you carry pain, it doesn’t give you an inherent right to pass it off wherever you’re able. Certainly not to unassuming strangers.

The men lifted the package onto the staircase and escorted it upstairs on its enlarged dolly as MJ shut the front door, pressing the center of her forehead to the wood and cursing herself for giving in to such a backwards idea. 

Once they’d retired from the townhouse, MJ crept upstairs to join the package in the master bedroom. She dialed Peter’s number once she’d reached the threshold, staring down the package as if it harbored a radioactive isotope. With his gentle prodding, she plucked up the courage to scoot nearer to the package and began to unwrap the cellophane around the rectangular foam box. She completed this task without much complaint until it was evident the next step she was to take concerned the lid, which was also styrofoam and fitted loosely onto the box.

She secured both hands on either side and slowly revealed the contents, gasping although there wasn’t anything candidly sinister. What could be found sounded stranger in theory than in real life: arranged body parts, all wrapped in the exact same, possibly recycled, transparent plastic as the crate beholding it. Her hand eased over a protected arm, muscled in advanced although when she pressed her fingers deeper into the flesh it deflated slightly.

“Say something,” she said aloud. 

“Let me see.” replied Peter from his post on her bedside table.

MJ peeled her eyes away from the unnatural sight to grab onto her phone and open the camera app. She fixated on the face, which was paled of any determining features that would make any mortal specific from another, and snapped a photo before sending it to Peter’s haunted inbox.

“Well. I sure was a looker, wasn’t I?” he attempted to joke. 

She lowered the phone and replaced the artificial eye of the camera with her own, unable to keep from staring.

“It doesn’t look like you.” said MJ.

“Not yet. It’s blank until you activate it. Get the bath ready.”

MJ didn’t acknowledge Peter then, kneeling down slowly beside the crate. Her hands reached out as she allowed her fingers to follow the oddly accurate curves and knots inside the limbs, questioning to herself how any of this could possibly function correctly. She worked very briefly in the AI department, mostly bothering herself with the likes of F.R.I.D.A.Y and Karen. She also excelled in Robotics Lab as a high schooler, but nothing during either of those projects could have prepared her for something as advanced, yet seemingly juvenile, as this. She wondered how Stark Industries wasn’t the first. Then she wondered what competition they would have to suit up for if this cloak and dagger company ever went mainstream.

“MJ. Get the bath ready.” repeated Peter. She was snapped out of her daze and unhinged herself from the floorboards, cleansing out the crate and hurrying into the bathroom.

It was an hour before MJ was struggling to adjust a man-sized vegetable into her bathtub molded for toddlers. The building process was rudimentary, even for an underground label, but with all that work in the lab rendering any other strain on her body null, it was a nuisance dragging the ragdoll into the bath. Her shirt was soaked as she lowered it into the lukewarm water, her breathing stunted by a slight pant as she relaxed on the edge of the tub. 

She lifted her arm and sniffed at a wet spot, “God, what is this?” she asked.

“Hang on, let me find out,” Peter said, disappearing for a moment as she wiped her hands on her dry jeans. “It’s nutrient gel. Stops the synthetic muscle drying out in transit.” he explained. She finally decided to undress out of her pullover, though she did continue to sniff at the passing stains.

“Smells like marshmallow,” MJ said.

“You can eat it if you want, it’s nontoxic.”

“Haha. I think I’ll pass.” she droned, rubbing into her eye sockets, somehow able to ignore the extra person in the room. If it could count as a person, anyway. 

“Don’t forget the electrolytes,” reminded Peter. She glanced over and the shimmer of a silver packet caught her eye. Leaning over the occupied tub, she ripped it open at the seal and poured what appeared as flakes into the water. “All of it.” he added, as if he could predict the question she was beginning to generate.

“It looks like fish food.” she noted.

“He likes the taste of it. Better leave him to it now.” 

MJ escaped the bathroom, placing her phone in her back pocket as she returned downstairs for water that would refresh her dried out mouth. It was a spectacle she could even will herself to speak through a sandpaper tongue. She poured half a pitcher into a large glass and carried it into the living room, plopping onto the couch lifelessly and listening to Peter’s rambling on the process taking place above her.

She sipped sparingly despite her thirst. Her eyes were unfocused and bled silent tears as she gave one-worded responses to Peter. He noticed once or twice and checked in on her, but MJ would thwart his attempts with meek reassurances. If Peter, the one with eyes, were there he would have an infinite amount of word vomit to gift her. She could recall in fog-less clarity all of the moments he would stumble over himself; what he looked like, how he breathed, what information he took from her to reiterate and what he chose to go undetected.

They were seated beside each other on a plane once. It was London-bound and from the interior, it looked as if they were drifting into space with each thrust of the engine. They were fifteen or sixteen, the smaller details such as those were the only ones that had fallen away from the overarching narrative of these memories.

“Do you like planes?” he whispered to her.

MJ blinked out of an awkward, panic-induced stasis. “I’ve never been on one.” she said.

“I could tell,” admitted Peter as he leaned forward to focus in on the planes of her face, flat with dismay. “Is-Is it ok if I held your hand? I’ve never been on one either, but. . . Uh, I’m used to um, being up high. So I’m not afraid of this. I mean, I’ve never really had a fear of heights either, but-”

She clutched onto his arm, a teenage murmur inside convincing her that it wasn’t as personal as taking his hand. Though she had her chin turned upward to the ceiling, she could hear the identifying breath he released when he smiled and she could feel his warmth intensify underneath her touch.

“Is that better? I-I know it can’t be that much, I have my headphones if you want them too? I don’t really know what kind of music you like-” started Peter, offering his entire inventory to her if it helped. MJ quietly refused anything that didn’t involve the hardened flesh of his arm.

“Peter?” she interjected as he was beginning to sacrifice his complimentary peanut packet. He must have noticed she skipped dinner.

“Oh- yeah? What is it?”

She folded one arm over her chest and displayed her palm on their shared armrest.

“We can share the peanuts.”

When MJ tuned back into the frequency of her present world, she caught the last few moments of phone-Peter as his speech began to gargle, as if he were underwater, drowning. It unnerved her but it wasn’t like she could command him to stop. He hadn’t done it on purpose, and that was what shot a chill directly into her spine. 

She dug her phone out of her pocket and worriedly spoke into it, “What’s happening?”

“I have to go now. It’s almost ready.” he said, words broken up between pockets of air.

“No, no, don’t leave me alone with it.” she begged.

“Don’t worry, it’ll be alright. I have to go.”

“Wait, Peter-”

“I’ll see you soon.” His statement was closed by the sharp click of the line dropping. MJ’s hands had frozen, her fingers stuck in place over the screen, waiting for him to call back and inform her that it was a mistake, that they had more time - or better yet, that she’d wasted her 401k and the machine was simply inoperable.  
Upstairs, the sound of the tub creaking shuddered the second floor. MJ gulped in nothing, a safari of tongue and gums abrasive against her teeth. Her water held its presence on the coffee table at her feet but she’d been shocked into the submission of stillness. Overhead there came heavy footsteps, no different than any other she’d heard but it struck a chord within her anyway, knowing who bore those footsteps. 

At last, she rose from her seat on the couch and approached the staircase. She wouldn’t have dared to ascend them, but her eyes were trained on the top steps, awaiting with uncoiling exhaustion what would arrive. The sound increased in her earshot and she considered for a second’s time fleeing the residence, but her pride and curiosity immediately vetoed this notion.

All other emotions she had caught in a web of uncertainty had fled. As it stepped into view, MJ was returned to a dimension of grief. He carefully descended the stairs, droplets of water clinging to his curls and sliding gracefully off every other exposed limb. His head had been lowered before reaching the first floor, where he faced MJ.

She failed entirely to compute this phenomenon. It was Peter. Hair grew in place of the acres of bald she’d unveiled upon its arrival, dyed a brown so precise it dawned on her how they could have picked that specific shade so accurately from a color wheel. His skin unfurled an untouched porcelain and his eyes were animated and shined a brilliant copper. The way he moved, grasping one wrist with one hand and cupping over his groin, was unlike any movement she’d witnessed or programmed in AI before. It was indisputably human. It was more than that, too. It was alive.

“No clothes?” he spoke first. His eyebrows furrowed - furrowed - and he wore a grin. “This is a pretty undignified entrance. . .” Peter peered down at his cupped hands and let out a soft snort before connecting their gazes.

MJ didn’t know how to react. She stared unblinkingly, taking in every detail of his frame.

“. . . MJ?”

She didn’t answer to him and her disbelief had evolved so quickly that she couldn’t tell apart when she was breathing steadily versus when she was panting.

“At least a towel? I’m dripping everywhere.” requested Peter, his grin spinning into a full-fledged smile, but not even that could break MJ free of the captivity her mind had put her in. “. . . Hello?”

Eventually MJ was able to bring herself upstairs to collect a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt from his unused dresser drawer. It was surreal, picking out his clothes, something she swore to never commit to in real life. Everything seemed to have shifted in a matter of seconds, as soon as he’d batted his eyelashes at her.

They sat in the living room, on the same couch but nowhere near one another from MJ’s show of reluctance. Peter, now fully clothed and dry, patted on the empty space beside him.

“I know I’m practically half-spider, but I don’t bite.” he said.

Like a cornered rat, MJ had her knees knocked up to her chest. “I’m fine here.” she said. 

Peter’s mouth thinned into a light-lipped smile in either pity or sympathy. She watched the subtle twitches in his face, unsure whether they were intentional or glitches. He avoided eye contact per her rigid body language but persisted with conversation.

“Are you hungry? I can make you something.”

MJ was agog. “Do you eat?”

“I don’t need to. But I can if it makes you more comfortable.” 

She drew up her jaw, which she felt was out of place and close to having her gawk. 

“Don’t worry about it.” assured MJ, though her scientific nature was sparring with her personal preferences. She couldn’t help the intrusive thoughts involving her work; what would her coworkers think of this? Would they have considered it a morbid invention, or one to make the century? Surely they’d have been envious. Even MJ harbored that envy for them preemptively. Worst of all, though, she had an inconceivable amount of inquiries to make to him, but they were all piling up uselessly at the pit of her throat. 

At the thought of her throat, MJ remembered how parched she was, but also knew better than to trust water to quench her versatile thirst.

“I need a drink,” she said, exiting the room without pause and leaving Peter to sit incredibly still on the sofa. MJ swung open a cabinet and fluttered her hands around until she grasped onto a wine bottle. She moved fluidly, popping the cork, pouring half a glass of merlot, and draining the contents. The plum aftertaste lingered in her mouth and stained her lips, a fragment of this moment where time reversed and she could visualize that saying, something about cardinals and reincarnation, returning to dust. 

As she turned on her heel and felt her tiniest hairs shoot up at the sight of Peter in the framework, she knew that cardinal wings were now in the shadow of human husks.

“Are you sure-”

“It’s only once, it won’t kill us.” said MJ.

“The official advice-” he tried to say.

“Fuck the official advice, it’s one night.” She inhaled sharply as she looked over him. He looked back at her, worry etched into his artificial face, though from where she was standing it was all too mortal. “You look good.” she said, her voice treading an uneasy path.

“I am young.” reminded Peter without a misplaced grin or smile.

“I mean. . . You look like him on a good day.” she clarified.

“The photos we keep tend to be flattering. I guess I wasn’t any different.”

He wasn’t. Except for when he trudged home in his suit, clambering to the fifteenth floor where their apartment was located and collapsing in their bedroom. Whenever she unmasked him, he resembled a pulp more than a man. But sometimes he would arrive home gracefully, at night she could even see his silhouette dance in between the shadows of the alleyways and he would spin into the wide set windows she’d leave open for him. 

MJ placed her glass on the counter and drew her feet across the ceramic, stepping closer to him. She didn’t feel her shoulder pivot and twist as she raised her hand to caress his skin. She gasped, his flesh unreal. But no, it was real, it felt like miles of velvet had unfurled beneath her fingertips. It was cleaner and less dry than her own skin.

“You’re so smooth,” she spoke in a hushed voice. “How are you so smooth?” Her hand fell in the same place beneath his cheekbone, petting him. “You have pores and lines. . .”

If she were to have looked at him, she would see a twitch of pain in his dawning smile.

“It’s texture mapping,” he said. “The really tiny details are visual. 2D. Here, try my fingertips.” Peter sprawled out his fingers and offered his palm to her. 

MJ matched their fingertips and felt the blank terrain. She winced, feeling the tears in her skull and the salt in her waterline. 

“Weird,” Peter murmured, his eyes focused on her face, which was twisted in conflict. “Does it bother you?”

“No,” she answered at first. “Well- yes, but. . . I don’t know.” Her palm, flat against his, was beginning to hit his hand lightly as if she were the robot stuck in a loop. MJ’s eyes glistened with tears and in milliseconds Peter had registered this.

“Hey, MJ, don’t cry, please-”

“I missed you,” sobbed MJ softly, “I missed you so much.” She took one last step into his space before their lips connected and she captured him in a delicate kiss.

She led him upstairs. He’d already seen their bedroom, given the wet footprints on the floor, but she gifted him a small tour anyway. She would smooth her hand over a picture frame protecting a photo of them from their college graduation, or their sole engagement photo. She gave brief, ten second explanations, because she knew that these pictures came from the printer connected to Peter’s smart phone anyway.

He was seated on his side of the bed. She side-eyed him before reaching to the hem of her shirt and pulling off, then kneeling onto the bed and scooting his way.

“Well. Let’s go, Pete. Shirt off.” she prompted. He smiled, yanking his top over his head. Peter’s eyes fell over her, a shine in his pupils as she plopped down in front of him.

Her gaze hung on his chest. He tried to pin where she was fixated.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

MJ’s lips puckered. “He had a scar there.”

“Where?”

She exchanged a wary glance before extending her index finger and stroking beneath his collarbone. “Never healed properly. Dunno what caused it.”

In a shutter of her eyelids, Peter had created a scar flowing out from the soft skin following his jutted collar. She dropped her hand, allowing herself a moment to admire the near perfect accuracy of the splice.

“That’s. . . Fucking ridiculous,” she breathed. “Completely insane.”

He chuckled, the action rolling gently in his body and causing his chest to shudder a bit. This might have been to blame for her abrupt initiation. Her upper teeth anchored to her stained bottom lip, she rested her hand atop his and brought it up to press against her breast. 

Peter continued to gaze at her as if she’d done nothing at all.

“Hello,” said MJ. 

“Hi.”

“Hand’s on my boob.”

He immediately removed his hand from her bralette, which emitted steam inside MJ’s heart as she repeated her movements to resume his hold on her chest. He said nothing, his stare echoing into her features, void. 

“You’re doing wonders for my self esteem,” she commented, her tone pressed.

“I have no records of my sexual response. I didn’t talk about that side of our relationship online.”

“. . . Well, you have sexual responses, right?” said MJ, losing interest in his hand and moving down to clutch lightly onto his groin. “I mean- this works?”

Peter looked at her hand. “Oh. That I can turn on and off pretty much instantly.” She felt it rise and expand slightly inside her closed palm. “See?”

More than impressed, MJ kept a hold on his sweatpants even when the length reduced as her eyes flitted from his lower half to his face, where he appeared innocently smug, as he would naturally.

“I can do it again if you want.” he said. 

He did that and more. It was exceptional. MJ was moaning, not as restrained as she was dictated before by the thin walls of her previous apartment. Her eyes were shut in pleasure and her legs spasmed too frequently for her to be able to latch them at his waist without disrupting his precise movements.

“Oh god, oh shit, shit,” she sighed.

“Should I stop?” 

“No, no, keep going,” She was no longer fearful of raising her volume with him, and perhaps it would have been for the fact that he portrayed no genuine desire toward her if she cared to open her eyes. “Wh- Where did you learn this?”

“Set routine based on pornographic videos,” he elucidated without shifting his own volume to overpower that of the loud bed grating beneath them.

MJ would have found it comical how much porn he’d reviewed if she weren’t subject to the results of it. Overnight, they seemed to have marked everything on her list of preferences. She opened her eyes once to find herself on top of him, her knees bent behind his tailbone and her hips crashing down onto his. Although she could hear the occasional processed breath, nothing else would escape him. It never itched at her for long, being that as soon as she blinked they’d be tied into another position and she’d be swept into a separate reality of pleasure.

It was 3:15 AM when she released a final whimper as he was stationed between her legs and felt one more jolt of bliss in her muscles before Peter rose from underneath the sheets, raised above her by the strength of his hands.

“I love you,” she said, blood whirring in her heart.

“I love you.” he returned.

She slept until midday. The sunrise cracked and bubbled like an egg yolk over the New York skyline, sizzling as the afternoon hours approached their bedroom which was vulnerable to the heated light. When MJ was reaching full awareness, she rubbed circles into her face and flinched in response to the sun slow-roasting her. 

During the night, she’d parted from Peter and gone to rest on her back. As she craned her head to check in on her lover, she felt her chest bundle and clot. His eyes were open. Not wide, but open, and his chest was unmoving. It was horrific in the simplest of ways.

She must have gasped loudly, because it’d hooked Peter’s attention.

“What’s wrong?”

“What were you doing?” asked MJ.

“Nothing.” he frowned.

“The way your eyes were open. . . Scared me.” 

Peter’s face resumed to a default expression. “You’d like it if I closed them?”

“Uh? When you’re sleeping, yeah, that’d be real neat.”

He turned his gaze upward to the ceiling. MJ liked to imagine it was him fleeing from the intruding light. “I don’t really need to sleep.” grinned Peter.

“Yeah? Well, try next time. Nerd.”

The day proceeded on as any other day would. MJ chose one of her preselected commissions to work at, so her mind and body were dedicated to her easel for a decent portion of the afternoon. Her hand swiped at the flawless screen without many faults, which had been a rarity for her despite her long career in freelance art. It would be a rarity for any artist regardless of their talents. 

When she organized palettes, experimented with brushes, was able to puppeteer designs and will them into her own creations - that is when she felt most in control, most at peace with life. But only because she hadn’t been convinced she was the same person, living the same existence. On her stool, under the eye of her easel, she was nothing in comparison to the art she was blessed enough to secrete. At the very most she deemed herself a vessel for the few salvageable ideas she had recently.

Smiles were evanescent but accounted for on her face and she could hear herself sigh in content more often. With each swoop of her tense shoulders she could feel her extreme bone density decline and solace make a homecoming inside her.

At the threshold of her studio, Peter made an appearance.

“Do you need anything?”

MJ recoiled in her skin, unused to the sudden presence he would take in a room. Before, he’d make a curt rap on the frame, or stomp his socks on the stairs a little louder than usual to keep her jitters at bay. In any other setting she was competent enough not to backpedal over a simple sentence, but in her trade she felt as if her insides were exposed and she had to be careful not to let them slip.

“No, thanks.” she said as she spiraled in her seat, away from the easel.

“Are you sure? What about some coffee? Or a sandwich?” he pressed on.

“I said no,” reiterated MJ. 

Peter shrugged, beginning to return to whatever he occupied himself with downstairs. But she called to him, quickly satisfied by his hastiness in giving her his undivided attention once more.

“Look, Peter. . . I’m sorry. It’s just. . . Really odd.” 

He nodded. “I can say it is “pretty strange”.”

“I just need some getting used to it. . . To you, I guess. And I, uh,” she swept a loose curl behind her ear, “I shouldn’t have drank last night. Can you try and stop me next time?”

“Stop you from drinking?” echoed Peter. She could see that almost uncharacteristic grin peel over his mouth again. 

“Yeah,” she said.

“So. . . I get to enjoy being a hard ass?”

She laughed and it felt so pure and welcomed, the sound embedding itself into her ears, begging to be rehearsed again and again until all the noise in her succumbed to the muteness of time and toil. But this concept was nipped in its newborn bud as instead the chime of the doorbell reverberated in her earlobes and clung to the skin there. 

It rang twice more and MJ could feel her pupils shrinking in unabashed panic, collecting herself out of her seat and pushing at Peter’s back within seconds.

“What’s wrong?” 

“Get in the bedroom,” she demanded though her knuckles were already forcing him ahead of her.

“What?”

“Now!” exclaimed MJ, skirting around him to open the bedroom door and launch him inside. He didn’t stumble or double take, his back continuing to face her even when she slammed the door and audibly cursed in distress as she scurried downstairs. 

She made last minute adjustments to her hair and outfit, pulling her collar into place and rustling her mousy curls into a partial state of submission as she went to greet whoever decided to arrive at the townhouse at the crude hour of 2 PM.

She couldn’t picture anyone she knew in that doorway. Her parents fled back to Oregon the moment Peter’s heartbeat went flat and she neglected her friendships as if she were cued to. It could have been a Spider-Man fanatic, a rogue one that managed to discover their address. May was the one to take visitors after his passing because she thoroughly enjoyed seeing so many people who cared for him as much as she did at her door, praising every step he took and every word he spoke. But MJ did enough of that herself, over and over in her head, a nauseating cycle that had been keeping her holed up in that townhouse for months.

When she pulled at the doorknob, her mother was on the other side.

“Mom?” 

“Hey, Michelle.” Her mother greeted, stepping into MJ’s personal space without an invite and enveloping her daughter in her arms. MJ hadn’t felt the touch of her mother since the funeral. As she was given a semblance of the familiar yet distanced embrace, the feeling of starvation washed over her and she hugged her mother in return hastily.

Her mother broke first. Go figure.

“Well? Can I come in?” 

MJ hadn’t realized how long her stare must have seemed, or how long she allowed herself to hold that stare as her mother was left clueless on the porch. She nodded, scooting the door back and stepping aside so the older woman could saunter into the living area. Her mother was a woman of aesthetics far less ‘come and go’ as MJ’s. She’d been describing her daughter’s living arrangements like that since she was a child. When she chose to decorate her room at five in tie-dye with sparse furniture in exchange for more play room; ‘come and go’, when she refurbished at fourteen, adding a used loveseat in the corner and splattering the obnoxious walls with a haphazard stripes of black and white; ‘come and go’. 

When she forced herself to add new life to the Parker’s townhouse, docking most of her old belongings in exchange for the vintage style his parents favored and leaving the textured wallpaper survive: “Very comfortable.”

She dipped her hands into her pockets. “Thanks. Want some coffee?” proposed MJ, relieved at the silent smile her mother gave her which always meant ‘yes’. Luckily, she’d prepared a pot before devouring her commission, so her only task was to heat up the lukewarm liquid and brew in the minimal sugar for the other woman’s liking. That was the one similarity linked between them - two generations and their exclusive bond being that of the depth of their coffee.

MJ beckoned her mother into the dining nook, hoping to stave her off of the upstairs if she were able. They took their places at the table, and by the light in her mother’s eyes she could deduce that it was her favorite selection of furniture thus far.

“I thought you went back home. I thought you’d _stay_ back home.” she professed. 

“You weren’t answering any calls or text. We just felt uneasy-”

“I’ve just been busy,”

“We were worried.” Her mother repeated.

“Work’s been totally mad,” claimed MJ. “Which is sorta good, y’know, because it’s kept my mind off of everything.”

Her mother continued, “Including your family, I can gather.”

“Mom. . .” MJ released an exasperated sigh.

“Where’s the bathroom?”

“What?”

“Where’s the bathroom, Michelle, I need to freshen up.” She rose from the dining chair. “You left me out on that porch for God knows how long.”

MJ slumped into her seat and said without thinking, “Upstairs.” Her eyes drew closed in failure and a complete loss of motivation as her mother thanked her and left her to stew over her choices.

Peter had kind things to say about almost everyone he made eye contact with. Her mother was allegedly one of the few he couldn’t muster up the strength to lie about or fool himself over how neurotic she was. When they first met, Peter half-convinced MJ that he would fall in love with her egg donor.

“I promise I’m really good with moms,” he swore, clutching onto her wrist as she’d taken a parting step onto her front stairs. “But I think I might like her more. I always do.”

“How many moms do you come across?” 

“May’s friends,” excused Peter. He was flustered. It was years later that she knew why. May didn’t have enough friends, certainly not mom friends, to qualify Peter for a mom-adored title. But Peter rescued enough mothers and children to have an abundant collection of ‘family’ friends.

Her mother spared a single glance Peter’s way when he escorted her inside, and one sentence: ‘Not while my husband’s asleep’. She was engulfed in a Home Living magazine. MJ placed her hand over his hand, which was still fastened around her wrist, and reluctantly plucked each finger from her skin one by one. 

“My mom isn’t one of May’s friends.” she said.

MJ looked up from the unlit drink in front of her as her mother reentered, supposedly cleaner, if you assumed that freshening up consisted exclusively of dousing oneself in uncomplicated lavender and rosemary perfume. 

They conducted a rather calm and regulated conversation. Her mother would comment passively on her daughter’s choice of china to serve their drinks in, but MJ would sit idly by and tell a fabricated story about how Peter’s mother chose the specific set for her anniversary, and that would stun the conversation into a comfortable lull.

She walked her mother to the door around ten. Her commission was so severely delayed she would have to push it back to the following day. 

“Thanks for coming,” she said flippantly as her mother began to descend onto the pavement. 

“Let’s. . .” Her mother trailed off at an alarmingly quick rate. Usually she’d put together everything she had to say before she needed to say it.

“Call more. Text more. Visit more.” finished MJ, reaching forward to squeeze her mother’s shoulder. “Definitely.”

“Yes,” She retraced her last step so she could sufficiently hug onto her daughter’s torso. How. . . Amiable, MJ thought. “I’m glad you’re moving on.”

“What?” muttered MJ, her chin placed atop her mother’s head.

“There were man clothes,” she elaborated, again, breaking first from the embrace. “In the bathroom.”

“Oh. Right,” MJ looked at her mother blankly, recycling the expression from Peter, who was a pain in her stomach to imagine at the moment.

“Is he nice?” queried her mother.

Unable to answer, MJ kept her tranquil air and tightened her smile.

Her mother’s scrutiny dimmed from exhaustion and compliance. “You deserve whatever you want, Michelle.” 

MJ studied her mother as she took up step on the pavement and waned into the night. “Thanks,” she said to no one, withdrawing into the house.

She scrubbed out their coffee mugs fiercely, unsure as to where this passion had been summoned from yet unlikely to quell it. Her mind was prophesying the commission she still had maximized on her easel upstairs. MJ let it paste perennial propaganda of the piece to the walls of her skull. It was all she wanted to think about.

As if he knew this and felt something from indulging himself in her private moments, Peter materialized beside her.

“Is everything alright?” he said, casual as he would be if he were really there, slanting himself against the counter.

“I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

“What did your friend say?”

MJ halted every frantic action she was seaming together, her hand clenching the mug handle as she looked to him.

“That was my mom. You know her.” she insisted. “She said. . . She said she was happy that I moved on. In the best way she could, I guess, best way she’s able without melting.”

Peter cocked his head sideways. “Moved on to what?”

Unimpressed, MJ’s gaze carried on vacantly, tripping an alarm for Peter.

“Sorry. Is that not something I’d say? . . . I mean, it is, isn’t it?” He tracked her as she began to move, “Are you sure everything’s alright?”

“Yes, fuck-!” she yelped, losing her attention as she went to remove her hand from the sink and forgot the weight of the mug in her grasp, the water gliding beneath her fingers causing her grip to falter and the mug to slip and shatter in a high pitch screech. “Shit. . .”

They crouched simultaneously to recover the shards. MJ refused his service, distancing his hand from the controlled area of mug remains. He held no conviction to her, only offering his other hand to aid.

“I’ve got it,” huffed MJ, nudging him back. He offered his hand again, this time having been fruitful in collecting a shard. “I said I’ve got it!” she snapped, progressing and subsequently rooting the jagged clay in his palm. Breathing heavily as she saw his injured hand, she stood to her feet alongside him and watched him remove the clay without any cry or whine.

He let the clay balance out in his hand, his eyes narrowed at her. The slice in his palm didn’t bleed nor did any layer of skin peel. It seemed instead he was shrouded in one layer, the rest padding him being similar to that of couch stuffing.

“We need to wrap that in paper.” he said, sweeping the clay remnants from the floor himself.

Peter was instructed to go to bed before MJ. She dawdled downstairs, chewing at her nails and permitting encroaching thoughts the reins of her behavior. She truly didn’t believe she could carry on this way. Speaking to him, then hearing his disembodied voice, that was a comfort unlike any other. But seeing him again, seeing him well; absent of flaking makeup to hide the injuries on his grey skin and bloated limbs retired to the confines of a tight tux. That was not a kindness. That was a fate worse than eternal yearning. Everything she wanted she could see but she couldn’t hear or touch without instantly knowing that it was a charade.

Before the acceptance came the depression and bargaining. She stormed upstairs, clocked the attic door and disregarded all that wasn’t labeled ‘Peter’ or ‘Fragile’. She scavenged, stockpiling everything that resembled an instrument and reflected in the moonlight. She transferred the clutter into a duffel bag and let it drop to the bottom of the ladder, ignoring her instinct to flinch at the sharp clinks of the tools as they clashed during the fall. 

Entering their bedroom, MJ fished to the base of her drawer to rediscover her lab coat and adorn it. It wasn’t a necessary act, but it was something to help her feel sane about what she was planning. It wasn’t going to be for her maddened grief. It was going to be for science. 

Peter smiled, a bit dopey, as she came up beside him with her duffel bag of supplies. 

“Sexy,” he complimented. “What are you up to, MJ?”

She tossed the duffel onto her pillow and straddled him. His eyes were indistinct buttons sewn into a head that was molded by bath water and fish food. They harnessed no depth, no gravity.

“Where’d they put your brain?” 

“My brain?” chuckled Peter. He hadn’t touched her, not on her waist or abdomen, not where he would have if she were sitting atop the Peter that knew when to close his eyes. “You always said I lacked one.”

“Is it up here?” She prodded between his brows. “Somewhere else? In your back, like a doll?”

His head jostled at the contact. “Huh?”

“I need to know. What makes you _you_?”

Peter’s face softened against her expectations, but she had to remind herself that it was a learned, predetermined reaction in response to a series of repeated notes in her voice, kept recorded as per the law of his design. 

“What makes me _me_ ,” he repeated. “I suppose you do.”

“No,” she lifted her hips away from his thighs, gaining height over him, trying to feel taller as well. “You have to be your own, Peter.”

It clicked within him. “You want to know where my ‘brain’ is,” said Peter. “You want to try and fix me. Make me more like him, but MJ, despite the hypocrisy in that, this is a learning process. It will take time-”

“I don’t have time. I go back to work in a week. I have to see his office again. I have to see his friends again. I have to see Gwen and Potts and F.R.I.D.A.Y and fucking Karen-”

“Please slow down, it’s alright-”

MJ shoved him into the bed frame and unsaddled him, winding up quicker than she anticipated. What was she thinking? What was she meant to do, if she managed to coerce him into navigating his cloud? She aced Robotics Lab but she spent a month in the Artificial Intelligence Unit at Stark Industries. She would have destroyed him.

Honestly, she wasn’t sure whether or not she wanted to.

“Just- just leave,” she hissed hotly, yanking on the elongated lapels of her coat and drawing them around her body. 

“. . . Okay.” Peter complied, stepping out of bed and taking his leave.

MJ turned to him, fuming, “No!” she cried out. “No, that’s- Peter would argue over that. He would talk to me. He wouldn’t just leave the room because I ordered him to.” 

“Okay.” he said, returning to bed.

“Wh- fucking shit. . .” cursed MJ, burying her face into her coat and breathing in the faint chemical smell that would always linger in the fabric. He slid a hand up her back and tried to send comforting words, a ‘Calm down, Em’ but she rejected it all. “Leave!” she yelled.

Peter did sigh, she could credit him that, and when he went to open the door he did pause for her. “So you do want me to go?”

“Get out!” MJ rammed herself into his back and shovelled him out of her bedroom, all the while he calmly opened the door and entered the hallway. “Get out get out! You’re- you’re not enough of him! You are nothing!” She balled her fists and punched his chest and stomach, taut and soft at the same time, in rapid hysterics as he stared down at her in what she wished could be pity or some thread of real emotion.

“Fight me,” she grunted while delivering unintentionally light punches to his torso.

“I don’t do that.” he resisted.

“Fucking fight me! Hit me!” Hopelessly, she slammed her opened palms onto his chest. “Hit me! Come on! Why are you just standing there taking this? How can you take this?” MJ thrust another shove onto him. 

Peter watched her, absorbing every extremely loaded word she spit. “Did I ever hit you?”

“N-No, no, of course you didn’t. . . But you might’ve done it if I did this!” She resumed shoving him. “Or this!” She punched him without much weight in her fists. “I- I don’t know! Maybe you would have, but _you_ wouldn’t, would you? Would you?” 

“I could insult you,” he said.

“What?”

“There’s some invective in the archive. I was occasionally crude. I could throw that at you.” Peter grinned.

MJ could feel every muscle in her throat give in. “Get out of his house.”

Without protest or any sign of remorse, Peter maneuvered around her and left the townhouse.

She woke up alone.

In her fury and utter disdain for her own life, MJ had passed out in her lab coat and didn’t regain consciousness until around brunch time. When she focused her bleary vision and parted from the dearly beloved bed, her first stop had been the window that overlooked the back garden. She was anticipating overgrown vines on the uneven fence, dandelions hula-hooping in the gentle breeze, and a yellow morning sun on her face. She asked and received, that and a little bonus.

Peter was stationed at the fence like a guard, though MJ didn’t believe he would be so proficient in security. She cranked the small lever that unlatched the window and she forced it into an upward slot, craning her neck out the narrow space.

“What are you doing?” she shouted.

He chinned up to see her through the sun rays. “I can’t go more than 80 feet from my activation point.”

“Is that a joke?”

“Look, I know it sounds mental.”

She crossed her forearms over the sill, knitting her brows together in question. “Where’s your activation point?”

“ _MJ_. You’re the smart one of us. It’s where I was activated? The bath. I have to keep within an 80 foot radius unless my administrator, that’s you, is with me.” explained Peter.

MJ leered down at him. “Don’t call me your administrator.”

“No? . . . I think it sounds kinda badass. Better than Spider-Man, even.”

She allowed herself a laugh, one that came from the very hollows of her stomach and was not going to repeat itself.

“If you’re laughing, does that mean I can come back inside? I’m feeling really. . . Ornamental out here.”

MJ did grant him reentry into the townhouse. They chose their clothes together although she didn’t give him permission to shower with her, so he wandered aimlessly as the pipes hissed in the ceiling. She always participated in short, cool showers, as opposed to his old tedious, scalding baths, and made record time meeting Peter downstairs.

When she saw him, he was in possession of the photo capturing Peter’s first day of second grade. He regarded it with a chuckle. “Funny,” he said.

“Can you put that down?” requested MJ.

“But it is funny.”

“Can you just put it down?”

Peter placed the photo carefully on the mantle without further complaint.

Partially satisfied, she tossed him a sweater. “Now come with me, we’re going out.” 

MJ climbed into the driver’s seat of their car and tinkered with the radio. She passed up the low-fi station and let it rest on one that was playing I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).

“Cheesy,” said Peter as she jerked the gear shift into drive and pulled into the street.

She drove until they reached Vinegar Hill, where she detoured and led them across the bridge. If she had surveyed him out of her peripheral, she would have seen the East River mirrored in his synthetic eyes and the sun cascade through the tinted windows on his undamaged skin.

They weaved through East Broadway and bypassed Little Italy and Greenwich, which Peter narrated for her. She didn’t speak for the entire ride until they’d arrived on 34th Street.

“The Empire State Building!” he exclaimed. “I always wanted you here with me.”

MJ remained quiet as she exited the car and advised Peter to follow her. She waited for him to catch up to her before she completely missed the entrance to the historic building and instead deviated to an alleyway on the far side.

“Come on,” she encouraged as she noticed his slacking pace.

“What are we doing?”

“Just hurry up.”

Once she stopped, the whole Empire State Building under her inspection, Peter stopped next to her. Her hand reached into her inner-jacket pocket and unearthed his mask. She fixed it over his head and located a microscopic sensor that suctioned all of the air to kept it skintight. Unexpectedly warm and familiar metallic lenses looked back at her.

She grabbed Peter’s wrist and secured a web shooter to it.

“Hold me tight, okay?” said MJ as she brought his arm around her waist. 

“Okay.”

Using her free hand to press the button, a white stream erupted into the atmosphere and planted onto a window that reached the twenty-second floor. As they skyrocketed, every sound unparalleled by the thundering wind, MJ released the web and hurriedly jerked his arm to the right, launching another string and bolstering them up to the fortieth floor. She admitted to screeching when they lost a couple stories and she could see the earth below them come up extremely fast, eager to welcome them back to the surface. But nonetheless, she continued this rhythm until they landed semi-gracefully on the roof.

Peter, unaware that he could relieve himself of the mask, concerned himself with MJ who appeared blanched. She steadied her knees and gripped onto his upper arms, snaking her hands tenderly across his shoulders and neck as she decompressed the mask and removed it from his head. 

He went to stroke her face but she fanned his arm away. Without knowing what else to offer her, Peter began to roam the large expanse of roof. MJ had already charted her path. She stepped up to the very edge, her eyes narrowed to the street a million miles beneath her.

“ _Noooo!_ Don’t do itttttt!” proclaimed Peter, hyperbolizing before squinting his eyes as he approached the edge and looked at her. “. . . No, really, please don’t do it.”

“I’m not going to.” she said.

“Okay.”

“. . . You know, he would have figured out what was going on. This wouldn’t have ever, ever happened but if it had, he would have figured it out.”

“Sorry, hang on, that’s a very difficult sentence to process.”

She inhaled, pointing over the edge, “Jump.”

“What? Over there?” 

MJ nodded in confirmation, her stare interminable.

“I never expressed suicidal thoughts. Or self-harm.” he said.

“Yeah well, you aren’t you, are you?”

“That’s another difficult one, to be honest with you.” 

“You’re just a few ripples of you. There’s no history to you. You’re just a performance of stuff that he performed without thinking, and it’s not enough.” confessed MJ, at last. 

“Come on. I aim to please.” His voice was lilted as he reminded her, like she was a child who had forgotten her place.

“Aim to jump. Just do it.”

Peter didn’t have anymore remarks. “Okay. If you’re totally sure.” He angled his body to face the skyline and street; all of New York ahead and beneath him.

“See - Peter would have been scared,” she said, anger blossoming from wounds of fury. “He wouldn’t have just somersaulted off, he would’ve been crying, he would’ve been. . .” Her words were lost, but she was picturing it. Peter, at the peak of this very building, stripped of his suit and-

She didn’t have to imagine it this time. As she went to look at him, she saw his features shift uneasily and his button eyes coruscate with dread. 

“Oh,” he breathed. “Oh, no, God, no, please. I don’t want to do it. Please, don’t make me do it.”

“No, that’s not fair,” argued MJ, detecting the incoming waves of despair within. 

“No, I’m scared, babe, please don’t. . . Don’t make me.” Peter whimpered as he took a cowardly step from the edge, “I don’t want to die. Oh, God, I don’t want to die.”

“That’s not fair,” she repeated, sobbing, her mouth and nose already filling with saliva and mucus respectively from the inescapable, endless pounding of tears in her head, always keeping her from floating too high off the ground.

“Please, I’m scared. I don’t want to die. I don’t-”

He couldn’t finish. Or at least, she didn’t hear him finish as a blood-curdling, anguished scream ravaged her throat and she felt herself sink into the red hot core of the world from the weight of her tears.

__

 

May unbuckled her seatbelt and tumbled out of the car with the grace of a bow-legged toddler, disregarding her mother’s yelps as she dug into her cardigan pocket and inserted the house key into the lock, twisting it feverishly until MJ overshadowed the young child and unlocked the door for them both.

Inside, MJ set out a cake platter and cut two slices, her daughter’s slightly larger than her own by the youngster’s cheeky request.

“One huuuge slice for you, one tiny slice for me,” she pouted, handing May a plate.

“We need another slice.”

“Why?” MJ perked a brow.

“So I can take one upstairs.” 

“. . . But it’s not the weekend.”

“It _is_ my birthday.” The young girl said pointedly. 

A beat passed, MJ almost electing to deny her second taxing request before a small pinch of guilt in her tummy convinced her otherwise. “Okay.” she surrendered, relinquishing her cake slice and pushing herself off of the sofa to lead her daughter into the hallway. May tailed her excitedly, always oddly fascinated with her mother as she yanked the cord for the attic and lowered the step ladder to the ground floor.

MJ stood by as May clambered the steps, holding one of the cake slices so the little one could venture upstairs without issue. “Thanks, mom,” MJ murmured to herself, sighing heavily as May scooted around on her knees and extended her hand to reclaim ownership of the second cake slice.

“Hey Peter,” chirped May as she reached the attic.

“Hey! It’s the birthday girl.”

“I was just coming to hang out here for a bit.”

“Okay. I wasn’t doing anything.”

MJ eavesdropped on their conversation, the voices fading in and out of her ears.

“I brought you some cake. I know you don’t eat anything. I’m just using you as an excuse to get an extra slice.”

“How devious.”

She hardly registered her child calling out for her as she felt herself dissociate from the moment.

“Mom? Mom!”

“Yeah, I’m coming, I’m coming.” she droned, ascending the steps while remembering something her mother told her the day May was born.

As she cradled her newborn baby, pink and cherub all over, praising her for her father’s looks, she heard a timeless voice in her ear: “See, Michelle? Grief is just love with no place to go.”

Her mother was right. But she had already stored her love away long before the cardinals made their return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jesus fuck! This took about two and a half weeks to complete. I guess this prepares me for the next adaptations to this series. I hope you enjoyed reading this monstrosity, and thank you for grinning and bearing. I had a decent time writing it. 
> 
> If you have any questions, my Curious Cat is: https://curiouscat.me/piperlmccoy

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading if you've made it this far. It took me two and a half weeks to write this in its entirety and I am utterly exhausted. This is a part of a series however, so I feel like I've just warmed myself up. Or maybe given myself a death wish. I'll figure that out later.
> 
> If you have any questions or like to shitpost, my Curious Cat is here: https://curiouscat.me/piperlmccoy


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